


Not for Today, But for Tomorrow

by mousie3 (ErinKatz)



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No One Is Okay, Slow Build, avocados in love, but they are working really hard to help each other, other pairings may show up later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 19:45:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4973686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinKatz/pseuds/mousie3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moving forward proves to be easier said than done. Matt, Foggy, Karen, Claire, Marci, and Brett struggle to rebuild after the events of season one. None of them are really okay, but luckily they have each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not for Today, But for Tomorrow

Foggy knows it’s going to be a bad day when he wakes up. His entire body feels stiff and his head is sore and throbbing. His stomach doesn’t feel too great either. He wishes he could blame everything on a hangover, but all he drank last night was his now-standard shot of whiskey before bed. 

That’s the problem – not so much the shot of whiskey, although he knows that isn’t healthy – rather, that his life makes him want to drink a bottle of whiskey every night.

He has had days like this before. In high school, when Brett was outted after Foggy confided too much in the wrong now-ex-friend; in college when one of his suitemates turned out to be a biphobic asshole; in law school after he and Marci broke up for the last time and he thought he had lost one of his closest friends. 

None of those very real traumas hold a candle to the stress, pain, and heartbreak of learning that his best friend has superpowers and questionable morals that let him moonlight as a vigilante. And that he has been lying about it for years. He told Matt they were going to move past it, but he still hasn’t figured out how to do that. All he knows is that the whiskey is a better option than waking up from nightmares of Matt dead and himself and Karen in jail.

Of course, the whiskey’s not enough, nowhere near enough, so he’s left facing a full day of work, including a meeting with their first post-Fisk client, feeling absolutely miserable.

He drags himself out of bed and leans heavily on the sink as he splashes water over his face and brushes his teeth. Standing upright is asking too much of his back and stomach muscles, so he skips shaving. He’ll just have to match Matt as far as scruff goes.

Breakfast seems terribly unappealing; he swallows three ibuprofen with half a glass of water instead. Getting his suit on requires sitting on the edge of his bed, but then it’s on and he looks halfway presentable, despite how awful he still feels.

Choosing an office three blocks from his apartment has never seemed like a more brilliant idea than it does this morning; he makes it to work feeling only slightly more exhausted than when he left his apartment. The stairs are less fun than usual and he resolves to insist that they choose a building with an elevator whenever they have the money to relocate. If he survives that long. And if Matt survives that long.

His breath catches – he needs to stop thinking like this if he ever wants to get out of this mess. And if he wants to keep up any pretense of being okay in front of Karen. He has no illusions that Matt hasn’t already heard his breath or heartbeat or whatever and doesn’t already know how not-okay he is. At least Matt won’t say anything about it. The super senses don’t have an off-switch, but Matt has kept his revelations to himself since Foggy made it clear that he was uncomfortable with them.

He takes a deep breath and swipes a hand across his eyes, then opens the door to the office.

“Morning, Foggy,” Karen says, barely looking up form the form she’s filling out. “You’ve got the meeting with Ms. Brown in an hour.” There are dark circles under her eyes, but otherwise she looks perfectly put together. He is struck with the absurd thought that their office could win some sort of competition for faking-it-till-you-make-it. Then he thinks that he really needs to take better care of his friends.

“Okay,” he tells Karen and ducks into his office before that last thought can send him into another panicked, guilty tailspin. Matt remains behind the closed door of his own office.

Karla Brown shows up right on time and Karen ushers her into the conference room, where Matt and Foggy have both managed to arrange their note-taking tools and the notes they’ve already made without being in the room at the same time. Foggy follows Karen in and he can hear Matt right behind him. 

The meeting starts well. Karla tells them her story. Foggy is furious at the painfully routine narrative of a white man’s word being taken over a black woman’s, but he also feels hopeful because there are ways they can fight this, ways that will definitely work and that might just help Karla repair some part of what was shattered. 

When Karla finishes her story, Matt begin talking about what they can do to help her. He’s saying exactly what Foggy was thinking. Even after everything, they’re completely in sync as lawyers. He isn’t sure what to make of that.

He stands up to grab a book from the other side of the table and the vertigo slams into him. He had wondered if this would happen when he woke up feeling so terrible, but he hadn’t had the energy to plan for it. Now he grips the edge of the table with one hand and the back of his chair with the other and tries to look casual. He must succeed to some degree because Karen and Karla don’t seem to notice.

Matt notices. He’s tilting his head towards Foggy, obviously listening to his racing heart and his dropping blood pressure. Back at Columbia or at Landman and Zack, this would be the point when Matt would make an excuse for both of them to leave and then steer Foggy into the nearest dining hall or coffee shop. He would find an empty table and press Foggy into a chair while he got sugary pastries and overly sweet tea. Afterwards, Foggy would feel better, but Matt would still insist that they go home and spend the rest of the day watching movies. At some point, Matt would ask a few gentle questions and Foggy would tell him why he hadn’t been sleeping or eating and Matt would hug him and it would help somehow.

Matt keeps talking. It looks like they’re not doing anything like that today.

Foggy waits for him to get to the end of a sentence, then says, “I’m going to step out for one moment. I’ll be right back.” He’s proud of the way his voice doesn’t shake.

“Do you want us to wait for you?” Karen asks.

“No,” he says, holding one hand against the doorframe and forcing a smile. “I know where Matt is going with this part and I agree with him.” 

The ghost of a smile flits across Matt’s face and Foggy wonders, not for the first time, if it would be possible to wipe the man in the mask and his complimentary super senses from his own mind and go back to the way things had been. 

He steps out of the conference room and closes the door behind him. 

There’s a vending machine on the first floor of their building. Packaged cookies may be infinitely less appealing than tea and pastries, but his blood sugar won’t know the difference. His blood sugar also won’t care that Matt isn’t here. It won’t even know that Foggy isn’t sure whether he’s more relieved or hurt by that. 

He keeps a tight grip on the guardrail on his way down the stairs and feels lucky when he doesn’t see anyone else. The folks in the financial office next door already seem to think their little firm is weird. 

He’s proud of himself when he makes it to the vending machine without tripping over his own feet. His head is still swimming, but not much more than it was upstairs, so he counts it as a win.

He fumbles his wallet out of his pocket and finds a few twenties and a single, crumpled one dollar bill inside. He offers, a brief, silent plea to whatever saint Matt prays to for good luck before trying to feed the fabric-soft bill to the vending machine. Of course, the machine refuses to bite. He shoves it forward again, holding it as rigid as he can given the way his hands are shaking. The flashing instruction to ‘Please insert $1.00’ makes him want to cry.

He leans heavily against the machine and pulls out his phone. Matt may not want to be helpful right now, but Matt isn’t his only friend. It takes him three tries to unlock his phone; he does give himself credit for dialing Marci without accidentally hitting any other numbers.

Marci has only seen him like this once – back in law school after a professor had falsely accused him of plagiarism and threatened to fail him. She hadn’t asked any questions. She had produced a bar of fancy orange chocolate from her purse, then taken him back to her apartment, stripped him down to his briefs, tucked him into her bed, and spooned up behind him over the covers. When he woke up, she made them omelets and didn’t ask any questions. She hugged him when he told her what had happened.

Marci’s phone keeps ringing until it goes to voicemail. If he asks her to come pick him up and she doesn’t get it for a while, she’ll beat herself up over it, so he says, “Hi Marci. It’s Foggy. Um, you knew that. I just thought we should get lunch sometime.”

He nearly drops his phone as he hangs up, but he manages to slide it back into his pocket with his wallet. Resting his head against the vending machine, closing his eyes, and taking a few deep breaths doesn’t make him feel any better. Still though, he’s pretty sure that if he goes back upstairs, he can make it through the rest of the meeting if he sits down and doesn’t try to get up. Or lean over. Or look around too quickly. He doesn’t have to be completely useless because he doesn’t feel great. Matt works through worse twice a week.

By the time he drags himself back to their office, the floor is tilting under his feet and his head is trying to float away. Stairs will do that to you, apparently. He makes a mental note to present it to Matt as evidence that living on the top floor of a building with no elevator is a bad idea. It doesn’t seem like a very compelling argument in the face of Daredevil needing roof access.

He gets the office door open, then has to lean against the doorframe when his knees nearly buckle. He tries to will his body back under control. It doesn’t work – everything feels like it’s graying out, even though closes his eyes. 

Something hits his shoulder and he flinches hard. An arm snagging around his waist is all that keeps him from crashing into the floor. His eyes fly open and he finds himself face-to-face with Matt. Well, face-to-chest, more accurately, seeing as his face is practically smushed against Matt’s chest. 

“Come on,” Matt says softly, tugging him a little more upright.

Foggy lets himself be manhandled as Matt uses both hands to steer him around the office and into a chair before rolling the chair backwards and pushing his shoulders forward so his head is resting on one knee. Matt’s hand lingers on his hair for a moment as he says, “Just focus on breathing. You’re going to be alright.”

He doesn’t feel aright. His chest is tight and his face is hot and he can’t stop shaking. He barely notices Matt opening and closing the drawers of the desk in front of him until one of the drawers squeaks loudly. That’s when he realizes that he’s in Matt’s office, with Matt’s cushy chair and Matt’s squeaky desk drawer.

“Found it!” Matt exclaims softly, pulling something out of his desk. Foggy turns his head without lifting it off his knee and sees Matt holding a bottle of purple Gatorade and a bag of gummy bears. He wonders if he has started hallucinating because Matt is almost religiously opposed to food with fake coloring and he regularly gives Foggy a hard time about keeping processed snacks in his desk. Well, he used to give him a hard time about it, back when they were able to tease each other. He blinks, and now Matt is crouching in front of him, still holding the ridiculously colored bag and bottle. 

“You don’t like gummy bears,” Foggy says. He feels a bit winded just from talking.

“You don’t either, except the sour ones,” Matt replies, resting a cool hand on the back of his neck. “The bodega on the corner didn’t have those, though. Sorry about that.”

“That’s okay,” Foggy says. He’s not positive what is going here, but he’s pretty certain that Matt shouldn’t be apologizing.

“Nothing about this is okay,” Matt says, standing up. He tears open the bag of candy and twists past the seal on the Gatorade, then sets both on the desk. “I’m going to go wrap the meeting up. You should drink something at least. You’ll feel better. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He squeezes Foggy’s shoulder before stepping out of the room and closing the door behind him. 

Foggy slowly lifts his head, propping his elbows on his knees. When his head doesn’t feel too swimmy, he sits all the way up and pokes the drink bottle with one shaking hand. It feels completely real. The last however many minutes probably weren’t a hallucination, so yay. 

That means Matt actually was taking care of him, even if he waited so long that it was fairly clear he didn’t really want to. Except, he had Gatorade and gummy bears in his desk drawer, disgusting Gatorade and gummy bears that neither of them would want to eat under normal circumstances. He briefly wonders if Matt has been lying about his disdain for processed foods; then the preposterousness of the idea hits him and he nearly laughs.

Matt had them here for Foggy, for a situation like this. Most likely, he got them before they were fighting, but he kept them and gave them to Foggy when he needed them. And maybe that just means that Matt is a minimally decent human being. It has nothing to do with whether or not Matt trusts him. It shouldn’t matter right now, but it feels like it does.

He takes a tentative sip of the Gatorade, clasping the bottle between two trembling hands. It tastes as disgusting as he expects, but it doesn’t make him feel sick, so he keeps drinking slowly.

It feels like something. It feels like Matt cares and that helps as much as the bizarrely colored liquid. Or maybe that’s just his exhaustion-addled brain making up gibberish and they really can’t move forward. Because on his side, he’s still walking the tightrope between wanting to demand that Matt never lie to him again, even by omission, and demanding that Matt never mention Daredevil or his super senses.

Suddenly, it’s all too much. He wipes furiously at his eyes as they well up with tears. When that doesn’t help, he focusses on keeping his breathing even. Matt can probably smell tears, but he can definitely hear ragged breathing. While part of him want matt to come back right now, he also knows he will be embarrassed about that as soon as he feels better. So he puts his head down on Matt’s desk and counts his shuddering breaths.

He makes it to one hundred at least twice before he hears Matt and Karen and Karla exiting the conference room. He can make out Karen’s bright goodbye and thinks that the meeting must have gone well. Then Karla is gone and Matt is talking softly to Karen, probably telling her to take lunch because she leaves a minute later.

“Hey, Foggy,” Matt says, opening his office door.

Foggy’s breath hitches and he decides not to risk lifting his head. He hears Matt cross the room and lean on the desk in front of him. Then there are hands on his head, gently lifting it off the desk. He wants to protest, to tell Matt to leave him alone, but he’s going to start crying in earnest if he tries to speak. 

“Oh, Foggy,” Matt says when he has both hands on Foggy’s cheeks. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Foggy doesn’t know whether to tell Matt that he doesn’t need to apologize, that they’re going to be alright, or to demand to know if Matt even has the slightest clue what he needs to be sorry for.

His body makes the decision for him as a sob wrenches its way out of his chest. Matt lets go of one cheek and grabs his shoulder, tugging him until he’s pressed against Matt’s chest. He wraps one arm firmly around his shoulders and rests a hand on the back of his head.

Now that he has started, he can’t stop sobbing. There’s no other word for it, really. He can hear the terrible, wounded noises he is making and he can feel the wet spot already growing on Matt’s shirt. 

Matt strokes his hair, moving his hand in time with his breathing. His heart is thudding along at a much brisker clip. That’s when Foggy realizes he can feel Matt’s heartbeat and breathing so well because his left ear is pressed directly over Matt’s heart. It’s surprisingly comforting. He wonders if Matt did that on purpose – if being able to feel other people’s heartbeats is comforting for him and he decided that it would be for Foggy too.

He doesn’t get very far along that train of thought because he feels Matt’s chest starting to quiver. Then Matt is sniffling and pressing his face into Foggy’s hair. Foggy brings his arms up to wrap around Matt’s stomach and pulls him close. Matt curls around him with a sad, mewling noise.

He has no idea how long they stay like that before there’s a knock at the main office door.

Matt pulls away from him and reaches around on the desk until he finds a box of tissues. He takes one and holds the box out to Foggy. “Marci’s here,” he says, voice remarkably steady. “I take it you called her.” He doesn’t sound particularly upset or particularly pleased, which Foggy supposes has always been his reaction to Marci.

Marci opens the office door when they don’t answer her knocks. Foggy rubs a tissue over his eyes even though he knows it won’t do much good and tosses it in the general direction of Matt’s trash can.

“Foggy bear?” Marci calls. He doesn’t trust his own voice enough to respond.

Matt takes care of that problem by opening his door. “Hi Marci. We’re in here,” he says.

“Murdock,” she says. Then her eyebrows go up. “What happened to you?” She snaps her mouth shut, seemingly surprised at her kneejerk worry about Matt.

“I’m fine,” Matt says stiffly.

Foggy turns to face Marci and steps in front of Matt, mostly to break the tension between them. “Hi, Marce,” he says.

“Foggy,” she says, resting a hand on his forearm. “I know I said I didn’t care about what was going on between you two, but I’m starting to think that I need to.”

He feels a surge of affection for her and it takes all of his willpower to avoid leaning forward and hugging her tightly. She would allow it, but she doesn’t enjoy that kind of display outside of the bedroom. Right now though, the last thing he wants to do is talk about what’s going on between him and Matt. He wouldn’t mind her knowing. In fact, he’s tempted to suggest that she take Matt out to lunch and talk to him about what’s wrong. She’s an excellent lawyer and he’s pretty sure she would have Matt telling her all about Daredevil before the check came. At which point, she would talk some sense into him far more effectively than Foggy has been able to.

He doesn’t want to spring that kind of conversation on Matt. He also doesn’t want the two of them to go off and leave him alone – he doesn’t want to be alone. 

Marci continues as though she didn’t expected a response. “You mentioned lunch, Foggy bear. Let’s go get ramen.”

He nods, because agreeing is easy and because he knows lunch won’t involve talking about feelings unless he wants it to.

“Okay,” she says. “It’s Friday, so we’re going to get lunch and then you can spend the weekend at my place. We’ll do chick flicks and cocktails and manicures and pretend we don’t have any work for two days.”

That sounds nice, so he nods again. A full weekend with Marci might actually distract him from the fact that Matt spends his nights parkouring with criminals. And going to get ramen now means getting out of this suffocating office where he and Matt are dancing around each other like they’re made of glass.

“Murdock,” Marci says, her voice more gentle than he has ever heard it when it’s directed towards Matt. “Do you have weekend plans? I don’t want to kidnap your best friend and leave you bored and pining.”

Foggy feels a pang of guilt that Marci was the first one to think of Matt. Especially because Matt won’t get bored or pine; he’ll keep busy taking stupid risks with Hell’s Kitchen’s criminal element.

“I’ll be fine,” Matt says. There’s something sharp in his voice that makes Foggy feel guiltier.

He steps away from Marci and puts a hand on Matt’s arm. “Give us a minute, Marce?” he asks.

When she says, “Sure, he closes the door to Matt’s office between them, grateful that not all of his friends have super hearing.

“Okay, seriously,” he says, suddenly unsure of what he should be asking. He hates this new awkwardness between them. “Do you mind if I ditch work for a weekend?” he finally asks.

“We’re name partners in our firm and we’re technically paying ourselves for five day work weeks,” Matt says.

“I thought we were paying ourselves annual salaries,” Foggy replies, “but I guess that’s not what I’m really asking about.”

“I know,” Matt sighs. “Maybe this is what we need. A deliberate mini-break. For some reason I have never understood, Marci has always been good for you. Go eat ice cream and braid each other’s hair.”

“And what are you going to do? Promise me you’re not going to spend the entire weekend on the rooftops or in the alleyways or whatever. Take Karen out and do something fun. You both need a break too,” Foggy says. “And if anything happens and you need me, call. Or show up at Marci’s. You know where she lives.”

“I’ll just aim for the penthouse of the tallest building next to Central Park,” he says. “But seriously, I don’t think I’m quite ready to show up at Marci’s in the suit.”

“Matt,” Foggy says, suddenly completely serious, “you know I’m not going to tell her about that, right? Or if you don’t know – because I get that this whole rebuilding our trust in each other thing goes both ways – this is me telling you that I’m not going to mention it. I’d love for you to tell her at some point and you really need to tell Karen sooner rather than later, but it’s your secret to tell.”

Matt relaxes, almost imperceptibly, but he looks sad. “I trust you. And I’m sorry for putting you in this position. You really should let Marci give you something else to think about for the weekend,” he says. He cocks his head towards the window and adds, “Karen’s almost back. Um, sorry. I know you asked me not to do that…”

Foggy cuts him off. “That is almost cool, no matter how invasive it is. Just give me time.”

He’s rewarded with a tentative smile. “And Matt,” he continues, “you know this isn’t me walking out, right? I’ll be back on Monday, and like I said, I’m only a phone call away. Okay? I’m done leaving.”

Matt’s smile widens into something genuinely happy. Foggy wraps both arms around him and holds on tight. “You’re stuck with me,” he says.

“And lines like that make me understand how you enjoy Marci’s terribly cheesy taste in movies,” Matt says.

Foggy pulls back and looks at him. Matt’s smiling and he’s pretty sure that he is too. He still feels shaky and he’s going to need to sleep for fourteen hours straight once he gets to Marci’s apartment and he knows that they still have to resolve pretty much everything, but he and Matt are smiling at each other. They might be able to find a way forward after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are love! [You can also visit me on tumblr!](http://erinkatz.tumblr.com)
> 
> The title is taken from a Ruth Bader Ginsberg quote: "Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow."
> 
> Fun fact: Justice RBG graduated from Columbia law school.


End file.
